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The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.  Elbert Hubbard

Last week I gave my first  PCA presentation with Charlie Williamson, the Chicago are Lead Trainer.  The presentation was for parents in the Northern district of the Archdiocese of Chicago.  We had a tremendous turnout, well over 100 people on a cold night when the weatherman was predicting the end of the world.

Charlie presented most of the evening, allowing me to get my feet wet with a short segment on Honoring the Game.  This allowed me to listen, and since Charlie is a great facilitator, it was an interesting evening.

The one section that always gets an interesting reaction is the ELM Tree.  ELM stands for Effort, Learning and Mistakes.  This section doesn't get reaction because Effort or Learning are particularly controversial, but when Charlie said "Mistakes are OK", you could almost hear the audience stop and say — "Did I hear that right??".

Nobody likes mistakes, nobody wants mistakes, yet they are crucial to an athlete's and team's development.

I wrote about this subject in August.  John Wooden's college coach Piggy Lambert said "The team which makes the most mistakes usually wins the game."  John Wooden always preached that a team can't play near it's potential if it fears making mistakes.

Accepting that mistakes will happen is a start.  Recognizing the things that went right when other things went wrong will help.  But giving your kids a routine to get over a mistake makes it part of your team's culture.

When a kid makes a mistake he'll look at either his coach, his parents or the ground.  The coach is usually grimacing, the parents are usually wincing and the ground doesn't provide much feedback…  Regardless, the kid isn't part of the play anymore and he's thinking about the last play, not the next one.  A mistake ritual can help get him back in the game.

The ritual is something quick and simple.  "Flush it" is popular — especially among the scatalogically inclined; "Wipe it off", "Park It" and "Shake it Off" work as well.  What you pick isn't as important as the message it conveys — Mistakes happen but we don't worry about them now.  That doesn't mean you don't work on them — that's why you have practice.

Flush those mistakes and park them until you can address them at practice.  You won't eliminate mistakes, nobody can, but you will give the kids a great tool to deal with the inevitable.